Quotes By James Thurber

It is better to have loafed and lost, than never to have loafed at all.

My opposition to Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.

The sanity of the average banquet speaker lasts about two and a half months; at the end of that time he begins to mutter to himself, and calls out in his sleep.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.

Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.

Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.

The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.

There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.

Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy, wealthy, and dead.

Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness.

Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

Last night I dreamed of a small consolation enjoyed only by the blind: Nobody knows the trouble I've not seen!

You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.

Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.

Love is the strange bewilderment that overtakes one person on account of another person.

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.

Discussion in America means dissent.

I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance - a sharp, vindictive glance.

There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.

Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?

A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.

Laughter need not be cut out of anything, since it improves everything.

The difference between our decadence and the Russians' is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.

Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.

I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.

Love is what you've been through with somebody.

Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with man is man.